Parity of the Sexes

By Sylviane Agacinski

Book Overview

Sylviane Agacinski has never shied away from controversy. Vilified by some--including many feminists--and celebrated by others as a pioneer of gender equality, she has galvanized the French political scene. Her articulation of the theory of "parity" helped inspire a law that went into effect in May 2000 requiring the country's political parties to fill 50 percent of the candidacies in every race with women.

Sylviane Agacinski, according to The New Yorker, "is sometimes credited with making parit respectable." Agacinski begins with the notion that sexual difference should be affirmed rather than denied. Sex, Agacinski points out, is not a social, cultural, or ethnic characteristic--it is a universal human trait. In her argument for the necessary recognition of sexual difference, she enters into today's most controversial social territory.

Agacinski's model of parity does not strive for the nebulous ideal of "equality" between the sexes; instead, it demands a concrete formula for political contests: an equal number of female and male candidates in every election. It is a theory that has sparked impassioned debate across France: Are female politicians necessarily different from male politicians? Is parity democratic? Is it truly feminist?

Agacinski's sophisticated polemic will stimulate debate on American shores as it has in France. Parity of the Sexes sheds light on one of the crucial spheres of public life in which earlier French feminists left their work unfinished--the realm of political power.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0231115679
• ISBN13: 9780231115674
• Release Date: October 2001
• Publisher: Columbia University Press
• Length: 208 Pages
• Weight: 0.25 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.5" x 5.6" x 7.1"
• Grade Range: Postsecondary and higher

Customer Reviews

A Most Important Work

This book is one of the most important works of feminism, period. It deserves a wide reading in the United States where, unfortunately, Agacinski and her ideas are virtually unknown. Agacinski argues that it is the different roles enacted by the two sexes in generation that should be the basis for the organization of society. This means, among others things, insisting on parity between the voices of men and women in societal decision-making. It means a rejection of all things forcing androgyny, because androgyny always conflates to androcentrism. It means a real embrace and recognition of the interdependence of the sexes written in the mixity of all human generation. It means a rejection of artificial reproductive technologies that hide either the contribution of the mother or the father to offspring. It means undoing millennia of sexual hierarchy that makes women appear a mutated, inferior version of a man. I found myself underlining nearly every sentence, my brain exploding with new thoughts at every page. I cannot recommend this book highly enough. Read it, and see the future--a future that would be heaven, or a future that would be hell--depending on the choices each human society makes with reference to women.